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How to ruin a keyboard in 6 easy steps

Step #1
Desperately desire a purple backlit keyboard – but balk at paying to actually buy one. Find a YouTube video on how to use electroluminescent wire to make a backlit keyboard. Figure you’re skillful enough to be able to do that..

Step #2
Take an old keyboard apart, buy some USB connector el-wire and get to work

Step #3
Grab a drill and start drilling holes in the keyboard to thread the wire through from one section to another. Swearing and cursing that either the drillbit is blunt or the keyboard is made from admantium…… as it will not drill through – no matter how much you try… then find that not being lazy by using that whatever drillbit was already in the drill… and actually changing to a different coloured larger drillbit not only goes through like butter by comparison but means you can pick one that is a perfect size hole for the wire (then put the stupid blunt drillbit back in the box to make for fun times next time it’s used)

Step #4
Snake the wire around between where the keys go. Pop a key back on, feel satisfied that the keys will still work, and don’t give that aspect any further thought. Start off doing horizontal lines then after you’ve spent considerable time doing that, decide that since you have so much wire that you’ll undo what you’ve just done and snake it around vertically instead to use up more wire. Plug it in to check the wire still glows. Don’t bother to put the keys on to check it still functions – because that would take extra time…. so just hot glue the wire down and marvel at your magnificence.

Step #5
Put the keyboard back together… find out that while the clearance for the wire seemed to work fine when you tested a couple of keys – the wire does actually impede performance of the keyboard, so that instead of typing, you have to poke the keys hard to get them to work…. and that your “S” key will get stuck down almost every time you use it, sometimes requiring you to use the end of a spoon to pry it back out again. Also discovering that the el-wire doesn’t actually light up the inside of the keyboard enough, so you only know it’s there if you look at the keyboard, where you see the wire poking out from between some keys and not others (damnit, horizontal lines would be better!), so it looks quite crappy.

……. And that it makes the speakers hum annoyingly….

…..and doesn’t turn off when the PC is off, so you have to turn it off at the wall or unplug it from the back of the PC every night.

….. and that since you used a keyboard that has had most of the lettering worn off from overuse, and are using it in the dark (while gaming), and because the lighting isn’t actually illuminating anything (and because you don’t touch type) – that you can’t see the lettering on the keys enough to be able to type easily, as many of them are just plain black keys now….

Step #6
Go out an buy the $95 Saitek purple backlit keyboard you’ve been drooling over online (and failed miserably to emulate) and decide *never* to DIY a keyboard again.